


A Dark and Laughing Rain

by anextraordinarymuse (December_Daughter)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, post-ALIE speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 23:30:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6587551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December_Daughter/pseuds/anextraordinarymuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere outside the dirt is turning to mud atop the graves of people they’ve lost, and ghosts with beloved faces roam through the shadowed hull of what was once a space station, and the rain is washing away their footprints. </p>
<p>Inside, the only sound Marcus hears is Abby’s steady breathing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dark and Laughing Rain

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw a gifset on tumblr with this quote and this was the result. 
> 
> "Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man  
> With my three wishes clutched in her hand  
> The first that she be spared the pain  
> That comes from a dark and laughing rain  
> When she finds love may it always stay true  
> This I beg for the second wish I made too  
> But I wish no more  
> My life you can take  
> To have her please just one day wake  
> To have her please just one day wake."  
> ~Gaeta's Lament, Battlestar Galactica

Marcus’s leg aches when it rains.

Had he been sleeping the dull throbbing would have woken him; as it is, it drives him to his feet from his spot reading on the bed. Pacing will loosen the muscle.

He likes the sound of the rain against the metal hull of the Ark; he likes the smell of the Earth when it’s fresh and replenished.

That doesn’t make his leg ache any less.

The room soon becomes too small for Marcus. He slips on his boots but foregoes his jacket. The hallway is empty of the living when he emerges.

Arkadia is full of ghosts now. They dog his steps as he travels.

Marcus hesitates outside the door to Abby’s room. There’s no sound from within, and no pinpricks of light seeping out from beneath her door, so he keeps going. His hyper-awareness of his surroundings temporarily blocks out the pain in his body.

Marcus stops inside the open hatch of the ark. The rain makes halos of the lights that shine around the gate. There are guards out there, Marcus knows, but they’re redundant; the biggest threat to them now is within the walls. There are no guards to protect them from themselves.

His leg is uncooperative tonight. The ache hasn’t lessened, so Marcus lowers himself carefully onto his butt at the rim of the ship. He extends his bad leg over the edge – it might get wet, but if he tucks it under him now he won’t be able to stand later. He budges a shoulder up against the wall and leans into it; for a long time he’s alone with dark thoughts and the rain.

Uneven footsteps interrupt his reverie. Marcus lifts his head in time to see Raven step into the empty space next to him. She stares out into the rain in silence and then lowers herself haltingly to the ground next to him, and she does it all without acknowledging his presence.

Marcus returns his attention to the world outside the door.

“Where do we go from here?” Raven’s voice is low and barely carries over the pitter-patter of the rain.

“I don’t know.”

Raven drags an idle finger across the smooth and discolored skin of the new scar that runs up her forearm. She’s taken to wearing long sleeves to cover the twin scars, but tonight she’s left them out in the open.

“I was a coward.” There’s no venom to the words. They’re spoken with a tired sort of resignation. “I was weak, and I was a coward, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for that.”

Unbeknownst to Raven or Marcus, Abby is on her way back to her room from medical when she hears Raven’s words and slows to a stop without drawing attention to herself. It’s impolite to eavesdrop; she does it anyway.

She hasn’t been able to bring herself to face either Raven or Marcus yet – to face a lot of people, really – but she misses them. Abby tells herself she’s listening to their conversation because the sound of their voices reassures her, and that’s mostly true.

“Everyone gets tired of being in pain, Raven.”

A long silence passes, and then, “She only took that chip to save my life. Her autonomy, her freedom, her memories … she gave it all up. For me. Why would she do that?”

Marcus sighs and looks at the young woman next to him. Raven has never known a mother’s love; she’s never known what such devotion should look like.

“Because that’s who Abby is,” he says. “And that’s how she loves.”

Raven turns her head toward him. “I’ve never been loved like that.”

“Not many people have.”

Unthinkingly, Marcus raises a hand to his left shoulder and presses tentative fingers to the healing wound there. The ache in his leg has been so insistent tonight that he’s forgotten about the new one in his shoulder.

Maybe that’s not true; maybe he’s forgotten about the bullet wound in his shoulder from sheer force of will.

Raven watches the movement of his hand. “She shot you.”

Marcus drops his hand and nods. He fixes his eyes on the muddy ground outside. “Yes.”

Around the corner, alone and half-hidden in shadows, Abby begins to cry.

“ALIE would have made her kill you, and you knew it.”

“Raven …”

“I was there, Marcus. I was there when it all went to shit and Abby – ALIE had a gun to your head. You didn’t even try to fight back. You shot Jaha, but when it was Abby … when it was Abby you just gave up.”

Abby has one hand pressed over her mouth and one pressed into her stomach to contain the sobs that claw at her throat. This is what she’s running from, the truth she can’t bear to face: the memories of Marcus in front of her, one hand covering the bleeding bullet wound she put in his shoulder as he begs and pleads with her to remember him.

_Please, Abby …_

Marcus huffs out a chuckle, but it’s dry and humorless. “I tried to have her floated. Back on the ark: Abby saved Jaha’s life, and I tried to have her floated for it. I had her shock lashed to force the camp into cooperation when we first arrived. I was there when Jake was floated; I had Clarke imprisoned. Abby could shoot me a hundred times and it would be less than I deserve.”

“So, what? You would have let her kill you as some sort of penance?”

“No. I stopped being the man who hurt Abby Griffin a long time ago, Raven.”

“Your death would have hurt her.” Raven says it so quietly, but the words ring out like a thunderclap in his mind.

_I can’t do this again._

“But I wouldn’t have. Maybe we’re both cowards.”

He would have let Abby shoot him. He’d stood there and stared into her face, transformed into something alien by the AI in her brain, and waited for the end. Marcus had shot Thelonious Jaha – his friend – but he could not shoot Abby.

Even when he wasn’t sure that Abby was really Abby anymore, he would rather have died than raise a finger against her.

“Maybe it’s laughing at us.”

“What is?”

Raven shrugs and tips her head to look up into the midnight rain. “The rain. Life. Everything.”

“A dark and laughing rain,” Marcus murmurs. When Raven casts a questioning glance at him he explains. “It’s something my mom said to me once. I think it was a song. ‘Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man/with my three wishes clutched in her hand/the first that she be spared the pain/that comes from a dark and laughing rain’. I can’t remember the rest.”

Raven doesn’t answer.

The rain falls steadily outside the door, soaking Marcus’s extended leg and the dirt, and the night creeps steadily on.

 

* * *

 

 

The world is still dark and the rain is still a steady staccato on the roof when Marcus returns to his room. His leg aches, and his shoulder throbs, and the weight of his worry is a lead ball in his stomach.

Raven, Abby, Monty, Jasper, Clarke … everywhere Marcus turns he is met with pain, and loss, and fear. He can’t do anything for his own struggles, so how can he do anything for theirs?

Thelonious Jaha had been his friend and Marcus had shot him. No matter how many times he asks the question he can’t find an answer: did he shoot Thelonious to stop him, or as revenge for what he let happen to their people … what he did to Abby?

Marcus pushes those thoughts away. He refuses to keep his injured shoulder in a sling, so it’s tense and stiff from the demands of the day. His movements are slow and choppy as he unties his boots and tries to tug them off of his feet. He doubts he’ll sleep, but he should try anyway.

He’s barely managed to get his boots off when there’s a soft knock on his door.

Marcus sighs. He has no more wisdom for Raven; he has no wisdom for anyone, these days.

The woman behind his door isn’t Raven.

“Abby.”

Her cheeks shine with the evidence of her tears and tendrils of hair have escaped her ponytail to curl against her cheekbones.

“Can …” she clears her throat and tries again. “Can I come in?”

Marcus steps aside to let her in. Abby stops near the foot of his bed and turns to face him. He’s exhausted and she knows from the set of his shoulders that the injured one is bothering him.

She falls back on being a doctor, because it’s a natural state of being for her and she’s nervous, and she needs something to do with her hands.

“Let me see it.”

“My arm is fine, Abby.”

She glares at him and motions for him to sit on the bed. “Sit down, Marcus.”

Marcus does as he’s told. Abby waits until he’s perched on the end of the bed and then steps in front of him, between his open legs and close enough that Marcus can smell her. She smells like rain, and his brain sticks on that. Why does she smell like rain?

Abby doesn’t tell him to take his shirt off. That’s undoubtedly a long and painful process, and she has a feeling that he’s overused his arm today anyway. Instead she pinches the neck of his shirt between her fingers and pulls it carefully to the side until the angry, puckered circle of flesh comes into view.

The stitches are gone and it looks to be healing well. The skin around it is a bit irritated but there are no signs of infection. Just to be sure, Abby gently puts two fingers on the wound to check for excessive heat: nothing.

She’s not surprised. She knows that Jackson stitched him up well. The check is more for her peace of mind than anything else, and Marcus probably knows that too.

This is the closest she’s allowed herself to be to him in days – weeks, really. All this time she’s wanted to seek him out, to put her hands on him and reassure herself that he’s real, and alive, and now she’s finally here.

She’s here, and she can’t stop thinking about words he doesn’t know she’s overheard.

When Abby speaks her voice comes from somewhere just above Marcus’s head.

“It was the missile attack.”

Marcus’s brows draw down. Abby releases the collar of his shirt and he tips his head back to look up into her face.

“What?”

“It was the missile attack. I was pinned under that rock and you stopped breathing. I watched you stop breathing. I called your name and you didn’t answer, and that’s when I knew that I couldn’t lose you.”

She’s crying as one hand comes to rest against his neck and the other curls into his beard.

“I almost lost you then, and again when Pike sentenced you to death and you asked me not to do anything … and then I woke up in that bed and you were gone. It was like that moment I watched you stop breathing all over again.”

“Abby …”

“I love you, Marcus.”

He inhales sharply in surprise. He’s had his suspicions, a secret knot of hope that coils and uncoils in his heart, but he’s never let himself imagine this moment. He’s done his best to block the possibility out; it’s enough to know it, he doesn’t need to hear it.

Oh! How wrong he’s been. He does need to hear it: unexpected and freely given, wholly unlooked for and sincere. He needs to hear Abby say she loves him.

The words are so overpowering that Marcus has to drop his head. Tears sting behind his eyes and it’s all he can do to bring his hands up to grip Abby’s hips and rest his forehead against her stomach. They cling to each other in the darkness and the only sounds are their breathing and the rain.

“I’m so sorry, Marcus.”

He raises his head even as he’s shaking it in negation. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

She laughs a single, heavy laugh. “I nearly killed you.”

“It’s no less than I’ve done to you, at one time or another.”

Abby brushes her hand through his beard and bends down to kiss him. Her lips are sweet and soft against his; it’s a tender kiss, and Marcus repeats it once, and then again. Marcus squeezes her hips and pulls her against him. Abby tangles her hands in the hair at the nape of his neck. He closes his knees around her.

Abby starts in surprise. “Why is your leg wet?”

Marcus laughs. He’s forgotten all about his wet pant leg. “Rain. I was changing when you knocked.”

“Take those pants off before you catch a cold,” she demands as she moves away from him. “That’s all we need right now.”

He stands to do as she says automatically, and it’s only when Abby reaches down and slips her boots off that it occurs to him to be surprised.

Marcus slips out of his pants as she’s freeing her hair from the ponytail that holds it back, and then his chest heaves as she undoes the button on her jeans and pulls them off. He knows it’s not sexual, not tonight, but her legs are long and lean and the humidity of the rain has made ringlets of her hair.

Abby momentarily loses herself at the sight of Marcus in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt. His hair is long and wild and shrouds half of his face. Then she holds her hand out for his, and he’s so gentle when he takes it that she smiles.

His bed is small and ill equipped for two people, but they don’t care. Abby lets Marcus settle in first and then tucks herself into the open space in front of him, sighing as one heavy arm comes to settle just above the curve of her hip. His beard scratches the skin of her neck as he presses a kiss to the area just behind her ear.

“I love you too.” Marcus’s voice is a whisper in the darkness. He cradles her against his chest. “I was … overwhelmed, earlier.”

Abby nods slightly. “I know.”

Somewhere outside the dirt is turning to mud atop the graves of people they’ve lost, and ghosts with beloved faces roam through the shadowed hull of what was once a space station, and the rain is washing away their footprints.

Inside, the only sound Marcus hears is Abby’s steady breathing.

He cares not for a dark and laughing rain.


End file.
